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If fighting against hackers was a video game, it would be a game you’re always fated to lose. After all, once a hacker finds his or her way into your enterprise’s infrastructure, they’ve already won. Since doing battle with cybercriminals isn’t really a viable option, there’s only one logical course of action: To have the best enterprise security possible.

From implementing strong authentication to making sure security extends to mobile devices, the responsibility falls on the company to create an environment guarded by unbreachable walls.

Unfortunately, companies don’t seem to be doing enough of that defensive work, a fact illuminated by a recently released infographic.

Infographic Highlights Lack of Attention Devoted to Firming up Security
An informational graphic released by Robert Half Technology — and structured as a video game — points to the concerning trend among enterprise CIOs to simply overlook cybersecurity until it’s too late.

The graphic — which was based on polling of various IT directors in the United Kingdom — suggested that although the virtual threat atmosphere is brimming with attackers, business IT departments seem to not be doing much about it.

This lack of action can’t be chalked up to lack of knowledge, since 50 percent of respondents readily admitted that security breaches are increasing in numbers.

Yet despite that widespread acknowledgment of the increasingly formidable cybercriminal environment, there seems to be a prevailing ennui among CIOs about dealing with it, with one third of those interviewed admitting that cybersecurity is not even a company priority.

The reason for this laziness boils down in large part to the lack of a perceived threat. These days, it seems that if a business isn’t actively being attacked, it’s not doing much in the way of security.

This logic makes about as much sense as not closing your doors because nobody’s robbed you yet. Just because you can’t physically see the threat doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Healthcare IT Faring Even Worse than Retailers, New Study Finds
One of the most important things to understand about cybercriminals is that they’re a threat to all sectors. If you have a presence on the Internet, you’re susceptible to attack. It’s as simple as that. Yet some businesses are under the misconception that if they’re not eBay or Neiman Marcus, they don’t have to worry about a malicious intrusion.

The study found that of the industrial sectors it evaluated — including Finance, Utilities, Retail and Healthcare — it was healthcare that has experienced the largest rise in criminal intrusions. Unfortunately, healthcare is also the slowest industry to respond to an attack, taking an average of five days to repair the issue (compared to, for example, an average of 3.5 days for finance).

What this reveals is that although healthcare is just as vulnerable to infringements as enterprises in other industries, it’s unprepared to handle the reality of an attack. According to BitSight CTO Stephen Boyer, that’s likely because a major healthcare breach has not made headlines the way eBay has recently, for example.

But the absence of a major attack does not negate the fact that healthcare organizations house incredibly valuable information, including patient records containing the most privileged details. Therefore, it’s entirely plausible that the next major breach could be against a hospital — and if the BitSight study’s findings are any indication, it’s likely that the hospital will be left woefully unprepared and scrambling to recover.

In order to prevent this kind of thing from happening, it is imperative for organizations across industries to firm up security.

IdentityOn Blog

Entrust has been at the forefront of the identity-based security market for nearly two decades. Our identity-based security solutions secure governments, enterprises, and financial institutions in more than 5,000 organizations spanning 85 countries.